Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

To dissolve, submerge, and cause to disappear the political or governmental system in the economic system by reducing, simplifying, decentralizing and suppressing, one after another, all the wheels of this great machine, which is called the Government or the State. --Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution

Thursday, November 01, 2012

My Trip to the County Courthouse, by Kevin A. Carson

I just finished negotiating the bureaucracy at the Washington County Arkansas courthouse in order to get my mom an absentee ballot.

Both yesterday (when I picked up the application) and today (when I picked up the actual ballot), I had difficulty parking because of all the political campaign workers (including some of the politicians themselves) standing around with signs and obstructing the drive-thru area. I actually had to circle around and pass up empty spaces because the people holding signs didn't give me room enough to maneuver and pull into the spaces at the proper angle.

On the plus side, one of the people holding a sign was mayor Lioneld Jordan. It's not every day you get to glare at a mayor and refuse to shake his hand.

Inside, I had the joy of going through Security Theater with a metal detector staffed by County Sheriff's Department deputies, taking off my belt and handing over my phone, keys and wallet. First of all, nobody in Al Qaeda is going to bother blowing up some chickenshit county courthouse in Arkansas. And second, if they did they'd be smart enough to find a way around that perfunctory bullshit.

Mayor Jordan and his campaign staff had apparently been taking in my (pro-gun, pro-drug,
anti-police, anti-publik skool, anti-Walmart, pro-anarchist and
pro-Wobbly) bumper stickers while I was in the building, because I was spared any attempted gladhanding on the way out.

Aside from that, my only inconvenience was finding parking at the brew pub (thanks to some wonderful folks playing the game of "make the neighboring parking space unusable as possible while technically keeping within the lines"). And now I'm working on my first IPA, getting ready to write some columns, and trying to rinse the memory of my "public servants" out of my mind.